A Night Mask for Sleeping Can Aid Your Afternoon Nap

Exposure to light and dark control your body’s rhythms. When your optic nerve is deprived of light, your body starts converting serotonin into melatonin. However, exposure to artificial light suppresses your body’s melatonin production. As a result, the quality of your sleep and mood suffer.

Not only can wearing a night mask for sleeping keep your body’s internal clock regular by blocking out artificial light at night, it can also aid your afternoon nap. In this blog post, we consider the power of naps, and how your mask can help.

Napping Politics

American culture looks down on naps: they’re for kids, or the elderly, or lazy people, or people too exhausted to continue being productive. However naps are essential in many cultures, such as the siesta, a short post-lunch nap when the day is hottest.

Furthermore, the National Sleep Foundation states that a 20-30 minute nap provides increased alertness and performance.

A NASA study of sleepy military pilots agrees: it showed that a 40-minute nap provided a 34% increase in pilot performance and a 100% increase in physiological alertness.

Of course, you don’t want to nap too late in the day, since this would compromise the quality of your sleep later that night. The afternoon is the perfect time for a rejuvenating nap, and a night mask for sleeping can block out sunlight from your optic nerves. You can even lay in the sun collecting Vitamin D while you nap, simultaneously building serotonin while your sleep mask helps you convert it into melatonin.

Power Naps Work Wonders

Time and again, doctors have shown that napping boosts performance, mood, and creativity. Consider that fMRI scans indicate nappers’ increased brain activity all day (not just for a shorttime after waking), while the scans revealed “perceptual deterioration” for non-nappers. In fact, a 2008 study shows that a short nap is as effective as a cup of coffee—without the inevitable caffeine crash.

We recommend a night mask for sleeping during the day. Blocking out light starts the serotonin-to-melatonin conversion process, so you’ll fall asleep faster. The point of a nap should be to increase your productivity, not waste time tossing and turning with light (natural or artificial) in your eyes!

In the section, we consider circumstances where daytime sleeping isn’t just a productivity option, but a necessity. We also consider the dangers of these circumstances, and how a night mask for sleeping can help.

The Perils of Night Work

A short afternoon nap can boost your performance and mood, but for some people sleeping during the daytime is actually a necessity. Shift and graveyard work, on call work, and other circumstances, can dramatically alter your body’s internal rhythms. However, you might find sleeping during daytime difficult.

A 2011 medical literature review found that six out of ten studies indicate a link between night work and breast cancer. The key is artificial light’s effect on your body’s melatonin production, and how this damages your body’s delicate balance of melatonin and estrogen.

Breast cancer cells rely on the conversion of androgen to estrogen, and melatonin suppresses local estrogen production. It’s what doctors call “oncostatic” or anti-carcinogenic. When artificial light suppresses your body’s conversion of serotonin to melatonin, it affects estrogen homeostasis, and breast cancer cells have an easier time growing.

Whether or not you’re a worker who is overexposed to artificial light, a night mask for sleeping can serve as a key ally to keep your body’s hormones in balance.

Nap With the Nodpod

We hope this blog post has helped you. We recommend a night mask for sleeping during the day, whether for napping or due to night work. The nodpod can help you on your way to a restful sleep during the day. Blocking out light (both natural and artificial) causes your body to convert serotonin into melatonin, so your night mask can be an important part of your sleep cycle and general health.